In Moscow, at the Partizanskaya metro station, there is a monument - an elderly bearded man in a fur coat and felt boots peering into the distance. Muscovites and guests of the capital passing by rarely bother to read the inscription on the pedestal. And after reading, they are unlikely to understand something - well, a hero, a partisan. But they could have picked someone more effective for the monument.
But the person to whom the monument was erected did not like the effects. In general, he spoke little, preferring deeds to words.
The feat of Kuzmin first became known thanks to an article by correspondent Boris Polevoy, published in the newspaper Pravda. Polevoy ended up in this area and attended Kuzmin's funeral. On February 24, 1942, the Soviet Information Bureau reported on the feat:
“The Hitlerite officer summoned 80-year-old Kuzmin Matvey Kuzmich, a resident of the village of K., and ordered him to secretly lead a large group of Germans to the location of the military guard of the unit, where the commander of Comrade. Gorbunov. Getting ready for the road, Kuzmin, unnoticed by the Germans, instructed his 14-year-old grandson Vasya to get to the Soviet troops and warn them of the impending danger. Long drove Comrade. Kuzmin sworn enemies in the ravines, circled through the bushes and copses. Completely tired, chilled, the Germans unexpectedly found themselves under machine-gun fire. Soviet machine gunners, warned in advance by Vasya, shot the Nazis point-blank. The field was covered with corpses. More than 250 German soldiers died here. When a German officer saw that his squad was trapped, he shot the old man. The heroic feat of the glorious Soviet patriot Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin will never be forgotten by the working people of our great homeland."
Matvey Kuzmin posthumously became the most adult holder of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, however, he was not the oldest participant in the Great Patriotic War. A famous scientist, honorary academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, director of the Leningrad Natural Science Institute named after V. I. PF Lesgaft NA Morozov, as a sniper, personally destroyed several Nazis on the Volkhov front.
Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin (July 21, 1858, village Kurakino, Pskov province - February 14, 1942) - Russian peasant. Hero of the Soviet Union (1965), the oldest holder of this title (he accomplished the feat at the age of 83).
Unlike many generations of his ancestors, the boy was a serf for less than three years - in February 1861, Emperor Alexander II abolished serfdom.
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But in the life of the peasants of the Pskov province, little has changed - personal freedom did not eliminate the need to work hard day after day, year after year.
Growing up Matvey lived the same way as his grandfather and father - when the time came, he got married and had children.
Tsars changed, revolutionary passions thundered, and Matthew's life flowed by routine. He was strong and healthy - the youngest daughter Lydia was born in 1918, when his father turned 60 years old.
Matvey Kuzmin was born in the village of Kurakino (now Velikoluksky district of the Pskov region) in the family of a serf peasant (three years before the abolition of serfdom).
The established Soviet regime began to collect peasants into collective farms, but Matvey refused, remaining a peasant-individual peasant. Even when everyone who lived nearby joined the collective farm, Matvey did not want to change, remaining the last individual farmer in the entire area. He lived by hunting and fishing on the territory of the collective farm "Rassvet". Grandfather Kuzmich was an unsociable and unfriendly man. He was considered a "counter"; for his unsociable character he was nicknamed "Biryuk".
In August 1941, the Pskov region and the native village of Kuzmina were occupied by the Nazis. The commandant settled in his house, driving the owners of the house into the barn. In early February 1942, after the completion of the Toropetsko-Kholmsk operation, units of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army took up defensive positions near Kuzmin's native places.
According to B. N. Polevoy's testimony, a battalion of the German 1st Mountain Rifle Division was quartered in Kurakino, which in February 1942 was tasked with making a breakthrough, reaching the rear of the Soviet troops in a planned counteroffensive in the Malkinskiye Heights.
On February 13, 1942, the battalion commander demanded that 83-year-old Kuzmin act as a guide and withdraw the unit to the village of Pershino (6 km from Kurakin) occupied by Soviet troops, promising money, flour, kerosene for this, as well as a Sauer "Three rings" hunting rifle … Kuzmin agreed. However, having learned the proposed route from the map, he sent his grandson Vasya to Pershino to warn the Soviet troops, and assigned them a place for an ambush near the village of Malkino. Kuzmin himself led the Germans for a long time by a roundabout road and, finally, at dawn, led them to Malkino, where the 2nd battalion of the 31st separate cadet rifle brigade (Colonel Stepan Petrovich Gorbunov) of the Kalinin Front, which was then defended at the Malkinskiye Heights in the vicinity of the villages Makoedovo, Malkino and Pershino. The German battalion came under machine-gun fire and suffered heavy losses (more than 50 killed and 20 prisoners. Kuzmin himself was killed by the German commander.
MK Kuzmin was first buried in his native village of Kurakino. In 1954, the solemn reburial of the hero's remains took place at the brotherly cemetery of the city of Velikiye Luki.
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 8, 1965, for courage and heroism shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, Matvey Kuzmich was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the award of the Order of Lenin.
Leaflets were issued for the front, essays, stories, poems were published in newspapers and magazines about Kuzmin; one of the stories ("The Last Day of Matvey Kuzmin"), authored by Boris Polevoy himself, was included in the primary school curriculum. Writers, poets dedicated their works to him (for example, during the war years, the ballad of E. Petunin was widely known), sculptors. Streets in many cities of the USSR were named after the Hero of the Soviet Union Matvey Kuzmin (in particular, in the city of Velikiye Luki, a school and a street were named after him). A Soviet (and now Russian) trawler is also named in his honor.
Subsequently, in Moscow, on one of the platforms of the station hall of the Izmailovskaya metro station (then called Izmailovsky Park, and now Partizanskaya) and in Velikiye Luki, his monuments were erected on the hero's grave, and at the site of the feat near the village of Malkino, on Malkinskaya height - an obelisk. Under the sculptural image of Kuzmin at the Partizanskaya metro station (the work of MG Manizer) it is indicated that he repeated the feat of Ivan Susanin. The village of Malkino is a memorable place.
A memorial plaque in memory of Kuzmin was installed by the Russian Military-Historical Society on the building of the Lychevskaya secondary school, where he studied.
Family
Father - Kosma Ivanov, mother - Anastasia Semyonovna. Kuzmin's parents were serfs of the landowner Bolotnikov, who lived in the village of Kreplyanka (three versts from Antonovo-Kurakino, the Kuzmins' native village).
Matvey Kuzmich married twice: his first wife Natalya (a laborer from the village of Eremeevo) died in early youth. The second wife, Efrosinya Ivanovna Shabanova, came from the village of Troshchenko.
The Kuzmin family had 8 children (two from the first marriage and six from the second). As of 1968, the eldest daughter Ekaterina (born in 1903) lived in the village of Kurakino, son Ivan (born in 1906) worked in Velikiye Luki at the Locomotive Car Repair Plant (LVRZ), son Vasily (born in 1912) worked at the Velikie Luki Mill, son Alexey (born in 1915) is a retired military man and the youngest daughter Lydia (born in 1918) worked at a meat processing plant.
He was 74 years old when the authorities corrected his first official documents in his life, which read "Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin." Until then, everyone called him simply Kuzmich, and when he was over seventy years old, he was grandfather Kuzmich.
If you are at the Partizanskaya station, stop at the monument with the inscription “Hero of the Soviet Union Matvey Kuzmich Kuzmin”, bow to him. Indeed, without people like him, our Motherland would not exist today.